A systematic approach for developing agent-based architectural design models of segmented shells : towards autonomously learned goal-oriented agent behaviors

Abstract

Segmented shell design constitutes a novel and promising research area in shell design that has emerged over the last 10 years. The prospect of dividing a continuous shell surface into segments is to resolve some of the constraints of continuous shells that have limited their application in building practice. As part of large-span surface structures, segmented shells have shown to possess similar desirable features, while allowing for a high degree of prefabrication. The geometry of individual building elements and global form are, however, complex, which poses a challenge to designing and building segmented shells. One of the challenges of segmented shell design in particular is meeting multiple interrelated, sometimes conflicting, evaluation criteria: geometric validity, structural stability, and producibility. In segmented shell design geometric validity and producibility are aspects that can be considered locally, meaning on the level of the individual building element, while structural stability needs to be evaluated globally and can be conceived of as the global effect of the properties and interactions of all segments in the shell. Agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS) provides the opportunity to bridge the gap between local characteristics and global performance. By focusing on the detailed description of the individual building elements and their interactions and by conceiving of the global form as the result of a myriad of local interactions of virtual agents representing building elements, the global design problem can be solved in parallel on the level of the individual building elements. The work thus proposes a methodology for developing agent-based models of buildings where agents constitute building elements. The research pursues and synthesizes two investigative strands: on the one hand, generalizing findings from previously built plate shells as part of a case study-based, inductive research approach, which is geared towards building a catalog of validated design principles for plate shells; on the other hand, systematizing the agent-based modeling approach for architectural design-oriented applications in general, and plate shell design in particular.